


Marginalia Mishap

by mermaidforeachother



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Anxiety, Confessions, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug has ADHD, Misunderstandings, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaidforeachother/pseuds/mermaidforeachother
Summary: Note to self:DO NOT lend your crush the notebook full of glittery hearts doodled around your excruciatingly lengthy combined names.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 2
Kudos: 95





	Marginalia Mishap

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of the global pandemic, I am presenting this completely unedited AND unproofread, because I have stopped caring about anything making sense months ago. 
> 
> Marinette having ADHD isn't specifically stated in text, but she was definitely written with ADHD traits and habits in mind. 
> 
> This has been sitting completed in my drafts for months and I remember laughing a lot while writing it, so with much love, I hope it can make others laugh as well.

"Alya!" Marinette shouted into her phone, "What am I supposed to DO? I gave my study notes to Adrien, but I forgot what I wrote in them!" 

On the other end of the line, Alya holds the phone away from her face while her best friend's wails reverberate through the line at a deafening volume. 

"Are you talking about the set of notes where you wrote "Mrs. Marinette Agreste-Dupain-Cheng? Or the set that you left copies of wedding vows in the margins? Or do you mean the ones in science where you used a punnette square to calcuate the likelihood of your children to have his eyes?"

On the other line, there was a choking sound, and another loud wail, followed by a soft thump and a muffled, "Does it MATTER? IT'S ALL TERRIBLE, AND HE'S GOING TO HATE ME!"

"Chill, girl, it'll be okay! Use this chance to be honest about your feelings?"

"What if i can't Alya?" 

"Then pretend you have no idea how those wedding plans got there!" 

Marinette scoffed, and buried her face in her pillow a second time, screeched as loud as she could in frustration, then came up for air, "We both know that won't work, Alya! I'm a terrible liar!"

"How am I going to face him, Alya?!!!" 

"The same way you always face a difficult problem that doesn't involve a cute boy: head on, and with bravery!" She encouraged her friend. "I'll be here for you no matter what happens, and if you need me to help you think of a lie to cover it up if you're not ready to confess like that, then i'll do that too!" 

Marinette sniffed, and wiped away the embarrassed tears that had gathered at the corners of her eyes. "You're right, Alya, i've been trying to confess for months, anyway. This may not be the best way, but at least nothing can stop him from getting the message this time, huh?" 

"That's the spirit, girl! Walk into school tomorrow with your head held high! And maybe walk out with your hand held, too." Alya said with a grin. 

Marinette giggled, "Best of luck to me, i guess?" 

"Always, Marinette, always!" 

Reassured against her impending doom, the two girls continued to chat about classes and projects, Alya telling her about her latest investigative essay posted on the Ladyblog, titled "OK, Hawkmoth. Boomer Entitlement In Modern Day Villains"

The next morning, as students trickled into class, bleary eyed, and shuffling, Marinette sat at her seat with her heart pounding in fear and anticipation of seeing Adrien. Thoughts of what he could say, what could happen, swirled and condensed into a fog of anxiety in her mind. She did her best to keep Alya's words in the forefront; she could face any problem head on and with bravery. She DID face any problem like that, and she knew she could solve this one, too, somehow, with a little bit of good old fashioned ladybug luck. 

And maybe some good old fashioned thick skin as well. 

She never imagined that her class daydream doodles would be handed straight to the object of her affections, complete with a punnett square for their hyppthetical children. Mon Dieu, she thought, burying her face in her arms on her desk, "I even wrote the names i picked out for them!" 

She was certain Adrien wouldn't make fun of her for it, he was too nice for that. No, instead, he would let her down /easy/, probably with the dreaded confession that he was already secretly dating that girl he liked a while ago, and they were engaged since birth because she's the lost princess to a foreign kingdom and her grandfather lost a bet to Mme Agreste long before she had married his father and -! 

A tiny tap on her hip from her purse broke her concentration on her future public humilation and shame. Tikki whispered up to her, "You're thinking too much, Marinette. Try to calm down, you're a great girl! Things will be alright!"

If Tikki had more of a speech planned, Marinette would never find out, as the little luck kwami cut herself short and hid deeper in her satchel, as footsteps pounded frantically up the classroom steps, and stopped right next to her desk. 

Marinette peeked up from where her head was buried in her arms with despair and her heart dropped into her stomach at who she saw. 

"Marinette!" Adrien, the current bane and balm of her heart called out to her brightly. 

She jerked upright in her seat to face him, "Y-YES MORNING?" 

He smiled back at her, and didn't mention her botched greeting. "Good morning, Marinette!" He said as he pulled his satchel around to reach in as he was speaking, "I wanted to thank you again for letting me borrow your notes yesterday, they were super helpful since i missed those days last week because of work- "

Adrien said as he shuffled blindly in his workbag for the stack of papers he was given, never looking away from his friend who sat in her seat deer-eyed, and ramrod straight. Marinette was a skittish one at the weirdest of times, but since he learned it wasn't because she secretly hated him, he found it more charming than worrisome. 

"Ah- hah...yes..no no uh...nO PROBLEM?!" the girl stuttered out, ending her sentence on a much higher pitch than she intended, if the visible cringe she made afterwards was any indication. Adrien pretended not to notice the change, she was just like that sometimes, and he didn't want to make her self-concious about it. Her exciteable expressions were kind of cute, anyway. 

Something about the notes was burning him up inside, however.

When Marinette reached to grab the stack of notes back, however, he held onto them for a moment longer than neccesary, causing the girl to look at him with confusion and shock. 

"I do have to ask you about something i saw in the notes though- If...if that's okay?"

If her heart was in her stomach before, it was now all the way inside the catacombs of her beloved city. 

"Some..thing....my notes were? In my notes was- something there, you mean , what I, you, saw, i mean?!" Marinette looked at the ground, embarrassed, and grabbed the notes back as quickly as possible, clutching them to her chest, and internally preparing, but, for what, she wasn't sure. Rejection? Laughter? Being looked at like a weirdo?

Adrien smiled softly at his friend, she was clearly embarrassed at having left those drawings in the margins, but, if anything, they were very.....sweet. 

Putting on his best smile, the golden haired black cat casually put a hand on the edge of the desk, and leaned down to whisper to Marinette, who was doing her best impression of a statue again. 

"I never knew you shipped Ladynoir?"

Time halted so sharply, Chat Noir could have cataclysmed it without her knowing. 

The bustling of the classroom ceased to exist, the feeling of the papers in her hands suddenly burned. 

"What?" She asked, quiet as a mouse. 

Still whispering, this time, the grin audible in his warm voice, Adrien explained, "I won't tell anyone if it's embarrassing, but i think the drawings are very sweet. Even though they aren't really together, I think they'd be flattered by how well you drew them. " 

He drew back, finally giving her heart some space to beat at a human pace. 

Adrien shrugged his shoulders, and ruffled the back of his hair sheepishly, "O-Or, at least I'm sure Chat Noir would appreciate it, he's always the showboat, isn't he? B-But! You're friends with Ladybug, right? I'm sure she would appreciate your skills too!" 

"My? Drawings?" 

Since when had she drawn /shipping/ art of her and Chat Noir?! 

"Did you forget they were in there? Haha! No wonder you look confused! They're in the back-" 

Frantic, she flipped the paper packet backwards and opened to the last two pages, eyes zoning in on the doodles she'd left there. 

Blessedly, there were no signatures from Mrs. Marinette Agreste-Dupain-Cheng this time. 

But there definitely wasn't ship art either, what was he talking about. 

"I thought the poem was quite nice too, it's about Chat from Ladybug's perspective, isn't it? I remember you're kind of a fan, aren't you? I didn't know you could write so well, too! It's amazing!"

There were indeed drawings of Ladybug and Chat Noir on the page. Some were doodles of their different outfits, a couple were of chat noir himself, with notes like "which set of ears does he hear from?", but a couple of them were just of the two of them, in the quiet moments. A doodle of them standing together as shadows on the eiffel tower, overlooking paris, one of her as ladybug, tossing Chat by his belt at an enemy in a cartoonish rendition of something she'd done several times in real life, another drawing on the page was Ladybug and Chat Noir, sitting close beside each other on a balcony during sunset, Chat Noir resting his head on her shoulder, her arm around his shoulders in a comforting embrace. 

This one was a work of fiction.

Them sitting together like that wasn't all that uncommon in reality, but her holding him...that had never happened. But sometimes....well, sometimes the silly Alleycat looked so lonely, a loneliness she knew went much deeper than his unrequited crush on her. 

Sometimes, when they watched the Parisian sunset together, and he got that look in his eyes, she couldn't help but /want/ to hold her best friend until that empty expression went away, to hold him tight until his eyes filled back up with the warmth of the sunset, instead of staring blankly into the distance at something unreachable and unfathomable to her, no matter how close their partnership was. 

That wishful thinking was what she'd left on the paper, the only drawing in full color, capturing the oranges and reds lighting up the bronze of the eiffel in the distance, the purples and pinks looming higher in the sky, painting the clouds like candy floss. 

To the side of the drawing, she'd enscribed a poem. Writing wasn't always her strong suit, but she dabbled in it a little much like she dabbled in approximately fifty other art-related hobbies and skills. 

Adrien was a little too spot on in his interpretation of it. She felt a flush warm her cheeks. 

This wasn't nearly as bad as she thought it would be, but she still wasn't sure how to explain all of this to her crush, especially considering she didn't see how /any/ of it could be considered Romantic.

She looked back at Adrien, still standing by her desk, looking pleased as a plum, then back at the papers in her hands, then back at Adrien. 

"Oh! These drawings! On the paper! These and nothing else! That's right!"

"So, where do you get such great ideas from?" 

"I uhh....-"

"Sorry! That's a dumb question; of course, Alya runs the Ladyblog, you'd have plenty of references available. I really have to hand it to you, between the drawing and the poem, you're really able to make it seem like Ladybug is in love with Chat Noir, that's really impressive!" 

"Yeah, but, it's really not - "

The morning bell began to ring, and Ms. Bustier walked in, greeting her class. 

"Sorry, Marinette, I gotta go to my seat now, talk to you later, okay? Thanks again for the notes." He said with a wave and a wink as he hopped down the step to the next level, and settled down in his chair, leaving Marinette, as always, staring longingly at the back of his head. 

Unlike usual, however, this time there was an undercurrent of confusion mixed in. Did her poem really make it sound like she was - well, that Ladybug, which is her, was...is..in love with Chat Noir? 

Peeling her eyes away from the blonde in front of her, she looked down at the blonde she had drawn on her notebook paper, studied the details of the embrace she had drawn in a fit of desperate want to consol one of her best friends, and the words enscribed beside it. 

Her heart clenched. 

"What is love, anyway, but a desire to protect? "


End file.
